You were a good man today….but tomorrow is another day.

The problem with government intervention

The title may not be appropriate for this quote, but it was difficult for my limited imagination to come up with something else. In essence the government wants to increase the number of people that are considered middle class. Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit states, and I strongly agree, that it is not the things that make people middle class but the culture and philosophy. The “things”, a college education and home ownership for example, are not the causes of people being middle class but by-products. He calls this Reynolds Law and there are several links within the link above. Here is his quote:

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.